I don't usually have conversations that involve distance running in Kenya — only when I bump in Newt Tolman at the gym.

Tolman, 70, didn't start doing marathons until he was 59, but he has run close to 40 of them since, including 10 straight Boston Marathons. But he doesn't run just for the sake of running. For him, you see, it's not about the competition; it's about the experience.

Tolman, who lives in Surry, likes talking about the people he has met along the way, and he meets a lot of them. He travels with at least one of the two jackets his sister has hand-sewn for him and adorned with bibs from races he's run. It's a conversation starter. And when he comes home, the conversation usually starts with “I met a guy in ... ”

“I've met people from all over the world,” Tolman said. “It's easy. You have a common interest already because everyone is there for the same reason: to run.”

He met a couple of runners from Florida in Rome — or was it Greece? — and they have become fast friends with him and his wife, Cheryl. The Floridians have visited the Tolmans for the past two years to participate in the Pisgah Mountain Trail Run in Chesterfield.

Tolman said the Pisgah ultra race is still his favorite — and not just because it's local. But the list of other races he won't forget is long.

Tolman has run among the redwoods in California and re-traced the steps of Phidippides from Marathon to Athens. He's run Rome and just returned from Iceland after completing the Reykjavik Marathon.

“There were 13,000 people there from 62 countries,” Tolman said of the Iceland event. “That's why I do it.”

His times won't set records. He actually subscribes to methods of former Olympian Jeff Galloway, which combine running with short intervals of walking.

Tolman started a running group around the time he was training for his first marathon. He left the group because its other members “got too fast.

“Then we started another group, and they got too fast,” he said with a laugh. “I'm slow.”

Tolman qualified for the 10-kilometer run at the 2013 National Senior Games in Cleveland by finishing first in his age group at the Granite State Senior Games. He really doesn't care how he finishes at the Games, he said; he just wants to go to Cleveland.

“I've always been a Cleveland Indians fan,” Tolman said. “I'd like to go see an Indians game. And I'd like to go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

It took Tolman more than six hours to finish Boston last year because of the heat that took its toll on most of the field. He ended up walking the final five miles.

That, however, didn't stop him from battling 40 mph headwinds at the Big Sur International Marathon 12 days later. He said Big Sur is one of the most spectacular courses in the world and something he always wanted to do.

He wasn't sure what kind of shape he would be in, but ended up finishing about an hour faster than he did at Boston.

Tolman first started training to run the Clarence DeMar Marathon in Keene, a race he had watched many times. One of his neighbors at the time, Diane Harty, said she'd train with him. Now they are part of a group that has traveled all over the world to run marathons.

Harty has run marathons on all seven continents and is trying to run one in all 50 states. Tolman has joined her for several of the races, including the Hatfield & McCoy Marathon in West Virginia and the Rome Marathon, when Harty completed her seventh continent.

So, what's next for Tolman? Well, that brings us back to Kenya.

Molly Fitzpatrick, a friend of Tolman who grew up in Keene, now is helping to build educational opportunities for the underprivileged in Nairobi, Kenya. Along the way, she got into ultra running and adventure activities. She competed in the Chinese version of the Amazing Race and met a pair of contestants who are part of Kenya's Maasai community.

One thing led to another, and now Fitzpatrick and a friend organize an ultra race — the Amazing Maasai Ultra (amazingmaasaiultra.org) — in the high-altitude plains near Mount Kenya.

Fitzpatrick said the money raised from last year's inaugural event — which includes races of 21K, 42K and 75K — was about $25,000, enough to sponsor 20 girls from the Maasai community through secondary school.

Fitzpatrick said the alternative for many of the girls in that community is to “marry at puberty, not receive more than a primary-school education and bear several children before their 18th birthday. This education gives them a chance to have a different life.”

The cause is a good one and has resonated here in New Hampshire. C&S Wholesale Grocers donated computers for the schools in the community and Ted's Shoe and Sport in Keene spearheaded a shoe drive that provided about 50 needed pairs of new and used running shoes that have been shipped to Kenya.

Tolman said he plans to run in his friend's race one day. Good thing he doesn't worry about winning. The grand prizes for the Amazing Maasai Ultra-Marathon are live cows and goats.

Now that would be a conversation starter.

Email Jim Fennell at jfennell@unionleader.com.